AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And their story gives me hope.
But that’s their story, and this is ours. It’s not simple. And I am so angry. At Dax. At Julian Young. At the world.
At everything.
A silver ribbon wraps itself around my neck, and I yank it free, choking back a sob.
Fucking balloons!
Even if what he says makes sense, it doesn’t change the last three months. It doesn’t change the fact he thinks he can come back here and make my heart feel like it’s been ripped out and torn to shreds. To say sorry, and that I’ll just what? Forgive him and that’d be it?
I pull another ribbon from my arm as my breathing quickens.
The balloons swell against the ceiling, pushing lower and lower, sucking the air from the room. Ribbons wrap around me like the vines from my recurring nightmare. Pulling me in different directions, threatening to burrow through my limbs and rip me into pieces.
Sweat pools along my hairline and a bead rolls down my back as I gasp for air.
I stumble over to the window, climbing onto my bed to throw it wide open as I grab at the ribbons, scrunching them inside my fists and then force them through the opening.
Blue and white surrounds me, bouncing off the window frame, the rubber making a high-pitched squealing sound that makes my ears ring as I force them outside.
I push and push, shoving balloon after balloon through the window.
The sky outside the house is overcome with blue and white as each handful of ribbons and their accompanying balloons are thrown out.
I don’t stop.
I keep going, my muttered cries of unfairness and heartache burning my lungs as more and more are set free, soaring off up into the sky.
Nothing stops me.
Not the little kid across the road pointing with delight and tugging on his mother’s sleeve to show her.
Not the neighbor walking his dog as it barks excitedly at the scene.
And especially not Dax, who’s looking up at me from the porch below, his eyes not on the balloons, but on my face.
Always on my face, never leaving. He doesn’t look mad. He doesn’t even look shocked.
He’s just Dax. Dressed all in black, the mesmerizing ink on his arms and neck visible in the t-shirt he’s wearing. He’s watching me with those deep brown eyes that I’ve spent so many nights losing myself in. Those eyes that belong to the only person I’ve ever loved. The person without whom the last ninety days has felt like the worst punishment for a crime I never committed.
He watches me with a strange calmness until only one balloon is left.
The silver one.
I grab the ribbon and push it through the window, but it catches on the latch, and I tug at it as I look down at Dax. My traitorous heart lifts before I cut down any hope it’s trying to raise in me that it’ll all work out in the end.
Because what if it doesn’t?
Ninety days.
“You warped reality, Dax Silver. You are the worst kind of liar. Whatever the truth is… you’re so far from it, it could smack you in the face and you wouldn’t know!” I yell.
I give the balloon one hard tug to free it, and the motion rips it open, sending silver glitter cascading down over the porch below, and all over Dax. Then it hangs there on the outside of the window, like a lifeless body.
Just like me, seeing him again.
“This is what you did to my heart.”
